Nine years on Mechanics Desk, and why we built Spanner

For nine years, Mechanics Desk ran The Workshop. It booked our jobs, held our customers and vehicles, and produced thousands of invoices. It served us well, and this isn't a story about bad software. It's a story about a workshop that grew, and wanted more from its tools than they were built to give.

A workshop that outgrew the one-size-fits-all

The Workshop isn't one business. Under one roof we run vehicle repairs, a WOF and COF lane, fabrication and steel, performance parts, waterjet part sales and a cutting lab. A single job can start in the COF lane, pick up repair work found during the inspection, and finish with a fabricated part. Every one of those departments has its own accounts in Xero, and we need to know how each one is really doing.

That's where the friction was. We wanted every line on every invoice to land in Xero against the right department and account code, so our reports told the truth without someone untangling them at month end. We wanted to see the work our COF lane generates for the repair shop. We wanted to know, department by department, what we were making, where the hours were going, and what was sitting on jobs not yet invoiced.

Getting more out of Xero

Xero is our ledger, and we never wanted to change that. What we wanted was cleaner information going into it. In Spanner, every job line, invoice line and supplier bill line carries its own department and account code, and that travels to Xero with the right tracking. Payments come back from Xero, so the office can see who has paid without leaving Spanner. Supplier bills are matched to their purchase orders, and a cost that has moved is flagged before it's approved.

The result is that the numbers in Xero are right the first time, and the reports in Spanner, revenue and margin by department, staff efficiency, parts margin and unbilled work, are built from the same lines.

Using today's technology to work smarter

Software has moved a long way in nine years, and we wanted The Workshop to benefit. Spanner was built with the latest tools, including AI, which meant we could shape every screen around how our team actually works instead of fitting our work around the software.

• Time is entered once. A tech taps a job on their phone and starts the clock. That time puts the labour on the job, waits for the office to approve it, and flows to the invoice, the reports and payroll. Nobody keys it twice.
• The parts room talks to the floor. Techs ask for a part from their phone with a photo, and chat with the parts room until it's ready to pick up. Requests to suppliers are tracked, with a record of exactly what was asked for.
• Everyone starts on their own work. The office, management, the parts room and marketing each open Spanner on a dashboard built for what they do, with lists already set to their own jobs.
• Customers hear from us. WOF, COF and service reminders go out by email or text, job updates go out from the job page, and customers' replies come straight back onto the job.
• Invoices customers can read. Labour shows as one clear line with hours and rate, followed by parts and charges, the way our customers told us they like it.

Better than we hoped

We went in with high hopes, and the step up has been even better than our most positive expectations. The office spends less time chasing and re-keying. The floor spends less time walking to the parts counter and filling in paper. And for the first time, we can see clearly how each part of the business is performing.

We've kept our history, too. Our customers, vehicles, suppliers and stock came across from Mechanics Desk, with our customer and vehicle numbers carrying on where they left off, and our open jobs carried straight on.

Why we're sharing it

We built Spanner for ourselves, but we know plenty of New Zealand workshops are in the same spot we were: good people, more than one kind of work, and software that hasn't kept up. So we're making Spanner available to other workshops, and if you're coming from Mechanics Desk, we'll move you across free.

If you'd like to see it running in a real workshop, book a demo. We'd be glad to show you around.